fightingsioux4life

USA Penalty Shot coming up.

Two big saves by Lee. Lee shouldn't even have to make big saves in this game! Still 10-1 USA.

Stephan 10-1 USA. Nice job finishing.

Zucker, 9-1 USA. Delayed Penalty was coming up on Latvia.

Penalty on Latvia, 4x4 coming up.

Another stupid penalty by the Americans.

7-1 USA after 2 Periods. Very bad period for the Americans. Sloppy at times, undisciplined penalties and too much fancy passing and stickhandling around the net when just shooting the puck is called for. These things are a mere annoyance vs. Latvia, but they'll absolutely kill us vs. Canada on Thursday if we repeat them.

Kreider 7-1 USA. About time we restored some order around here.

6-1 USA. Latvia scores after about 2 minutes of 5x3 PP time.

My, aren't we being greedy during the holiday season!

6-0 USA after 1 Period.

redwing77, I agree with you on the arrogance factor, but I kind of like being the underdog; that makes it even better when we beat them! And all that arrogance does is motivate other countries to improve their programs. Didn't Don Cherry make the comment before the 2006 winter games that Canada could field three teams and win Gold, Silver and Bronze? And what did the "Maple Leaf Boys" win? As I recall, it was Jack Squat nothing. I am willing to bet comments like that only serve to motivate the other teams vying for Gold. So let Canada be the team to beat every year; I'll gladly accept the underdog role.

redwing77, Agree with you 100%; it's too early to judge these teams. The Swiss have a good goaltender and that's about it. Latvia looks to have nothing. The Czechs have fallen from where they were five years ago in Grand Forks. The games against the bottom feeders are only good to figure out your defensive pairings and forward line combos. The U.S. will probably smoke Latvia too, but that won't prove anything. Personally, I like the U.S. team better this year than I have since we won the gold in 2004. The roster is built on speed and athleticism, the goaltending looks to be solid and we have the best developer of young hockey talent (Dean Blais) as the head coach. This team should win a metal this year.

I have been measuring it at home since Wednesday night and my total is close to the NWS Office at 25 inches. The last storm in Grand Forks with this much snow that I can recall was January 6th-8th, 1989 when we got about two feet of snow from Friday Noon thru Sunday Morning. I was in Junior High and it was awesome to have that much snow to work with when building snow forts! Sometimes I wish I was a kid again and this is one of those times.

My localized snow total since 11pm Christmas Eve is 16 inches as of 7pm today. Add that to the 3.5 inches we got Wednesday night-Thursday morning and that's a storm total of 19.5 inches. Amounts will vary from place to place depending on where the heavy snow bands set up. Grand Forks has been in the firing line pretty much all day long. No travel is advised in Grand Forks right now. Unless you have a four-weel drive vehicle, I wouldn't even try to drive until tomorrow afternoon when things are supposed to calm down and we can get some of these streets cleared off.

I measured about a foot of snow outside my place around 1pm this afternoon. That is since 11pm last night. The snow is expected to continue tonight into Saturday morning before winding down. The one positive with this storm is that the winds are in the 25 to 35 mph range instead of into the 40-45 mph range like some previous storms we've had.

Just an FYI for everyone who hasn't been following the news, but pretty much the entire Upper Midwest (the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin) will be slammed by a major winter storm during the upcoming Christmas weekend. Here is a link to the Grand Forks NWS Forecast Office web site and a link to the Winter Weather Monitor Page: Grand Forks NWS Forecast Office Winter Weather Monitor Page Simply put, if you don't have to travel, don't. Stay safe everyone. I want to be able to banter with you on hockey and whatever else in the future!

I still remember how quiet the Alerus Center was after that game. Stunned silence. I wear a headset radio to the football games and right before the first turnover that resulted in a UNO touchdown that started the comeback for them, Dan Hammer was talking about a 10-0 record and first place in the region. Everyone at that moment was looking forward to the playoffs at home and a run at a second National Title. And in one instant, that all changed. And the program really hasn't been the same since. The swagger still hasn't come back. It's kind of like the 42-10 playoff loss to the Bison at home in 1995; the program wasn't quite the same after that for several years. Fate is a very cruel thing, especially in sports.

I agree that this loss is unacceptable and should not happen. But don't ask Mike Berg or he'll simply say "We lost to a darn good basketball team tonight." Sorry, couldn't resist. Now getting serious again, this is much worse than the FB team losing to USF. The Men's BB team has been irrelevant (with the exception of the Jerome Beasley era) since the early 1990's. There is no tradition, no recent winning history to build on. The program is basically where the Women's Hockey program is! In fact, I would argue that Women's Hockey is on stronger footing at this point! For the first time, I am having serious doubts that Jones is the right person to build this program.

This is almost the exact format I have envisioned for an FBS playoff. The major bowls would be playoff games; the minor bowls could serve the same function as the NIT in college basketball. I do think that there are too many bowl games; almost every team with six wins gets to go to a bowl game. I would get rid of some of the weaker bowl games, if that means some six win teams don't go bowling, then so be it. Otherwise, I would leave the lower to middle bowl games alone. And one more thing, no more having polls decide anything. Have a computerized ranking system like they use for the NCAA Basketball Tournament and have a selection committee make the tough, borderline decisions on who gets seeded where and who gets at-large bids and who doesn't. Every team earns what it gets based on their record and who they beat. That would eliminate 99% of the controversy and put the focus on the teams and players, which is where it belongs.

I was thinking the same thing. The weather might have been a factor in the turnovers. It's possible that SFA was banged up by this point in the season and didn't have enough ammo left. Or it shows us just how far we have to go to reach the level Montana has reached in FCS. I think it's a combination of all three.

I second your rant and will repeat what I have said on this forum and other forums before: The Bull Crap Series is a joke. It's the biggest joke in competitive sports this side of the shootout in hockey. All the bowl games outside of the BCS title game (#1 vs #2) are glorified exhibition games that mean nothing. The college football "postseason" has none of the drama or passion of the NCAA Basketball Tournament (which is very profitable, by the way). And if anyone is ready to respond with the charge of "apples and oranges" to that, I think it's fair to point out that some of the non-BCS schools are beginning to close the gap with the BCS leagues a little bit. Boise State is one example of this. TCU this year could give the Floridas, Alabamas and Texas' of the world a good game, maybe even beat them. But because of the Bull Crap Series, we will never know the answer to that question. END RANT #2

Amen.

Pointing out the obvious is not "whining", it's telling the truth no matter how bad it tastes. Would you rather have a fan base that doesn't care if the team wins or loses or a fan base that is rabid, passionate and has high standards? I know what I would rather have. This has happened too many times this season, young team or not. I just hope by the time Denver rolls into town at the end of January that this problem is a thing of the past.

We could have moved into third place with a win tonight, which is where I would like us to finish the first half of the season. And we were minutes away from doing that. The sooner these young guys learn how to put teams away in the third period, the sooner we can start to make a run at keeping the MacNaughton Cup in Grand Forks. The Denver Post thinks "the stars are aligned" for the Pios; I would like to see this team show them exactly where they can stick that comment! If this team can get it together in time, they can be title contenders. But if they don't, it will be "wait until next year" again.